The senior, who swims for Montrose, has literally put in the extra miles to become the swimmer he is.

Barnosky hails from Cedaredge, which on good days is a 50-minute drive down Highway 50 but usually an hour, and has rightfully earned a chance to swim collegiately next season at the Air Force Academy.

"It's always fun to come over here and know we can compete with the big teams," said Barnosky, who swam for Delta as a freshman when the Panthers had a team. "We enjoy it as a team, and I enjoy it as an individual."

Barnosky maintained his top-seeded position in each of his two individual events Friday in the preliminaries of the Class 4A state swim meet at the Veterans Memorial Aquatic Center. First, in the 200-yard individual medley, he touched the wall in a personal-best 1 minute, 56.63 seconds — 0.90 seconds better than Mullen's Louis Geist.

"I was very pleased with it," he said. "I'll be looking to take off some more time (today) and see what happens there."

Barnosky came back in the penultimate event of the night — the 100 breaststroke — and maintained the top time with a 57.35 swim, just ahead of Air Academy's Devon Davis, whom he got to watch in the heat prior to his.

Montrose coach Silas Almgren is more than proud of the strides his prized pupil has taken over his 2½ years with the Indians' program.

"His improvement has just been tremendous," Almgren said. "I think he started out a 1:05 breaststroker, and that's all about hard work. We would love to have a magic formula, but that's about it."

D'Evelyn standout Jeff Garnier set two Class 4A state marks, first in the 200 free. He bettered his 1:38.44 mark he set last year, going 1:37.67. Then in the 100 free, he went 45.41 to beat Silver Creek Nick Koerner's 4-year-old mark of 45.54.

"I'm really hoping for that 200, I think I can go .2 faster," said the Stanford-bound Garnier, who has his eyes on Jay Schryver's mark of 1:37.42 set in 1997.

Not all kids who play baseball are uniformed with fancy script across their chests, traveling to $1,000 instructional camps and drilled how to properly hit the cut-off man. Some kids just play to play.